


Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best

by counteragent



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU: Doomsday Preppers, Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-26 18:39:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counteragent/pseuds/counteragent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jerking off loudly to mess with Dean had lost its appeal a week and a half ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best

**Author's Note:**

> Sam is 17.
> 
> For salt-burn-porn, for the prompt: keep the lights on
> 
> A/N: John has raised his sons to be “preppers”: people who store food, water and weapons in preparation for the anticipated breakdown of society. The steel bunker mentioned is like these: http://www.risingsbunkers.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=64:layouts-pricing

Day 1

“Son of a _bitch_ ,” Sam said, pounding on the steel door of the bug-out shelter. The very locked-from-the-outside six-inch steel door. His hand throbbed and his temper rocketed with each clang until he was seeing spots from pain and anger. He resorted to kicking the door, his curses melting into a wordless scream of frustration. His steel toed boots rang out in a parody of a doorbell, like to like, and Sam finally spun around, defeated. His ribcage heaved as he fought tears of rage.

“You done?” Dean asked. He had already turned toward the supply shelves and appeared to be taking inventory, as if this were a family vacation instead of a crime scene. The weak light from the LED lantern outlined the resolved cast of his eyebrows.

“Are you?” Sam loaded his tone with bullets. “Dad locks us in a steel coffin ten feet underground ‘for our own good’ with nothing but food, water, a few UV lamps, and an algae pit, and you’re not done with the man?”

“Don’t forget the compost toilet, Sam. That’s key.”

Sam lost it, launched himself at Dean in an uncalculated attack. If he couldn’t hit Dad, he’d hit his brother, his brother who’d always taken up all the light in the room and way too much space in Sam’s mind and always, always done what Dad wanted. Dean had been a prepper since he was born, to hear him tell it, inventing new weapons (it’s a Crovel, Sammy. Five tools in one! Strikes down intruders and opens your beer afterward), experimenting with renewable food sources (Crickets just taste like nuts, I swear, Sammy) and following John Winchester through the hills and dales of crazytown, preparing for an unnamed but always impending apocalypse. Dean did it all with a smile, too. A grin for the daughters of seed merchants, a flash of easy camaraderie with Gordon, their munitions supplier, and a soft curve of pride at rare praise from his father. Sam was gonna wipe that smile off his damn face.

Except the smile was too close to him now, grinning down at him the wrong way around ‘cause Sam was flat on his back, pinned in Dean’s favorite wrestling hold.

Sam bucked like a wild horse, and Dean met him, his hold on Sam’s wrists punishingly tight and his weight shifting constantly to maintain leverage. Sam growled and shook, his actions erratic and juvenile, like he hadn’t spent the last decade sparring and wrestling. It was the confined space, the lack of light and oxygen. It was the letter of acceptance from Stanford in his pocket; he favored his right side to avoid crushing it. It was the utter and complete lack of anywhere to hide. Sam collapsed without warning, not giving up so much as just failing to think of anything coherent at all.

Sam lay there and gasped like the world’s stupidest fish, like Dean had been strangling him instead of simply holding him down. Sam felt every fold and crease of his clothing, every single hair bristling out of his stretched-too-tight skin.

“Easy, tiger,” Dean soothed, smug as hell, not getting it. “Nothing but first aid down here. Don’t wanna break your arm or something.”

Dean shifted on top of him, anticipating resurgence, and Sam bit his tongue mercilessly to avoid making a sound. The adrenaline flooding his nerves was drowning him; his panic and rage had been transmuted by an impossible alchemy into something unnamable. He thought he might be going into shock. He closed his eyes and hung on, breathing through his nose.

Finally Dean got off him, wary. His fun had drained away like water into parched earth, and he muttered a “You OK man?” like Sam was creeping him out.

Sam lifted and dropped his head back to the floor of the bunker. The dull thud felt good, grounded him a little. He opened his eyes. “Yeah, Dean. I’m gonna starve slowly in a madman’s tomb and I won’t even have a toothbrush. I’m absolutely fine.”

“That’s the spirit.” Dean helped him up. “’Sides, Dad said he’d be back in a week. Now, you want rice and beans for lunch? Or beans and rice?”

***  
Day 20

Jerking off loudly to mess with Dean had lost its appeal a week and a half ago. It sure as hell didn’t help that half the time his brain seemed to go offline and his thoughts drifted away from the rhythm of his hands and his well-plumbed spank bank reservoir (Estella Warren, Lauryn Hill) to the bunk beneath him. He’d wonder if Dean was awake. If Dean was as stir-crazy as he was, if his sleeping bag made him feel like he was being mummified alive but also like nothing he did was real when his body was so neatly zipped inside. If Dean had really gotten as much pussy as he claimed, if he liked to eat them out first or after, fuck ‘em rough or slow. And then the swish-swish of the nylon rubbing the plywood of the bunk was announcing him and he was coming in his own firm grip. Sam’d tell himself after that his mind had made it back to Estella’s beachy waves and apple breasts or Lauryn’s smoky voice and full lips before the end, that of course it had, that nothing else made sense. The darkness filling the bunker was complete enough to hide lies of all sizes.

Tonight darkness couldn’t hide anything: Dean was crying. Sam had felt it coming all day, like a storm finally breaking out of swollen, ominous clouds. He’d caught Dean earlier just standing next to the latest spirolina tank. His eyes had been staring mindlessly at the metal walls of their bunker while the siphon tube was spilling fresh, vitamin-packed life-giving algae onto the floor. Dean might as well have been hemorrhaging arterial blood—they needed that stuff. It had taken 20 agonizing seconds to wrest the tube away from Dean’s rock-still hands and 20 minutes to scrape what they could off the floor (Dean insisted it was his share but Sam switched their portions because dying fast of contaminated algae actually sounded like a good idea some days) and exactly five minutes after dinner for Dean to collapse on his bunk and turn his face to the wall. It had taken 20 days for Dean to admit that Dad wasn’t coming back. Dean probably thought Dad was dead; Sam assumed he’d just finally snapped. There was only so much planning for a fake apocalypse one could do without losing their shit.

Now, as Sam listened to Dean wipe tears away and breathe heavily in the suffocating darkness, Sam made up his mind.

His feet hit the ground and Dean tried to shut up, thinking no doubt that Sam was going to stumble past him to take a leak. Sam’s hands had found the zipper of Dean’s sleeping bag before Dean even turned around.

“Dude, what the hell?” Dean had to clear his throat to finish the question.

“Shhh, it’s nothing, Dean. Just relax.”

Dean would have offered further protest but Sam immediately smoothed his hands over Dean’s chest and laid his head on his shoulder. It was awkward; Sam was kneeling next to Dean’s lower bunk, and Sam’s left arm was twisted to maintain contact.

Sam’s gambit worked. His hands brushed around Dean’s chest, just soothing. They told him it was OK. They were thinner and dirtier, but they were still there, still together. Sam felt Dean quiet like a dog, always a loyal animal.

But Sam wanted to offer a deeper distraction tonight. Slowly he unzipped Dean’s bag further, keeping one hand on Dean’s chest while the other took the zipper down. He had to dip his teeth to the side of the bag to create tension but he knew that if he let go of Dean, he’d disappear into the thick featureless dark. He was never more than 10 feet away from Sam, but he’d be gone. The snick of the metal teeth giving way was as loud as a train in the heavy silence. Sam felt Dean’s chest still as he held his breath.

Sam carefully lifted the flap of the bag up and off Dean, who shivered with the incoming cool air. Sam figured that Dean’s T-shirt and top of his jeans were exposed, but he resisted the urge to check with his fingers. This was not the moment for small gestures.

Sam swung his leg up and over Dean, slotting himself into the bunk, his knees to either side of Dean’s thighs. The bag tightened with the pressure, trapping Dean’s legs. Sam heard Dean breathe in, the sound waterfall-loud in the quiet.

“Sam, what,” Dean said, and it was as soft as he could make it; trying not to spook Sam or maybe himself.

“It’s just. I. Look, pretend I’m a girl, okay?”

“Oh. Kay?” Dean made it into two words and Sam leaned down to kiss him.

He missed. They both went left and then Sam tilted his face up while Dean tried sideways, and Sam hadn't shaved in three days; how could he be a girl? His scruff scrubbed through Dean’s fuller beard and it tickled and felt weird and kind of stupid, like nuzzling a pet. And Dean smelled OK, nice actually—their supply of Irish Spring would outlast them both—but Sam hadn’t sponged off today and probably reeked. Not to mention earthworm-pie breath and--.

“Sam.” Dean gripped Sam’s face between his hands. “No chick ever thinks this much when she’s kissing me.”

“I—“

“Here, let me,” Dean was reaching down to Sam’s fly and Sam didn’t have to see his face to know that Dean was going to take one for the team, get Sam off and refuse to speak of this moment ever again. Sam was going to get a brush off from the only other person he’d ever see alive again.

“No, wait, Dean.” Sam reached down to find Dean’s hand. Lately he’d been watching Dean’s hands as he worked, staring at the intricate shapes the bones made and they danced together. Sam had even stooped to devising extraneous tasks for Dean’s hands to do: he handed him a tangle of rope yesterday he’d tied knots in the night before. Sam couldn’t help but stroke the palm with his fingers now that he had it captive.

“Look, Sam, you obviously,”

Sam reached down to Dean’s fly, unbuttoning and unzipping before Dean could finish.

“You got a girl in mind?” Sam said, and maybe it wasn’t the sexiest question but Dean was only half hard and flagging and Dean needed this, tonight. The fugue state by the algae tank wasn’t the only symptom; Dean was slower and slower to respond when Sam made conversation, which was such a reversal of Before Dean and Sam that it shook Sam to his core.

“Yeah,” Dean said, and “yeah,” he said again when Sam started palming Dean through his boxers.

Sam was afraid that speaking would break the spell but he risked a soft, “Tell me about her,” because he needed to think about Dean right now and it seemed cleaner. He wasn’t going to imagine Dean with himself even here at the end of the world.

“Mmm,” Dean said, and Sam reached into the opening of Dean’s boxers to draw out Dean’s hardening cock. “Honey brown hair, gray eyes. She had long legs, and this ass that was so high and tight it looked like it was floating, swear to god.”

Sam picked up the pace and was rewarded with a low groan from Dean. Dean’s dick was filling now, the head becoming tight and so smooth beneath Sam’s thumb.

“I was kissing her against a wall,” Dean chuckled, the sound dark with lust. “I wanted that ass, but I was afraid to ask, you know? Not all girls like it.” Sam’s hand stuttered in its rythym as the girl flickered out in his mind’s eye. Sam had seen anal in porn, of course, but he hadn’t known anyone who’d done it. Not anyone credible, anyway. Sam’s dick throbbed at the thought that--

Dean’s hand closed on Sam’s; he firmly started Sam moving again. “Good, yeah, that’s it,” he said, and Sam had to close his mouth not to pant.

“So I lick my middle finger and reach around, and it just sinks in.” Dean moaned and Sam almost overbalanced when he moved his other hand to his own dick, squeezing a little.

“And, oh god, it got better. Not only did she want it, but she’d done something about it beforehand. I bent her right over her dresser and filled her up with my fingers and then my dick.”

Dean’s dick was hot and hard, and they were both panting. Sam was raising up and down a little on his knees, flexing his quads in time with his strokes. His head kept wedging against the upper bunk, but he couldn’t stop—touching Dean was a commitment and his whole body wanted to sign on the line.

“Ungh, she was so tight and hot, better than I’d imagined—and I’d imagined it forever,” Dean groaned and Sam had a second to tease out why Dean had been lusting after a one night stand with long legs and a tight ass ‘forever’ before Dean was coming in Sam’s hand with a cry. Sam felt the warm come spurt over his fingers and in a disconnected moment his mouth moved of its own accord to lap it all up, the hungry parts of him wanting all he could have until there was nothing left.

When Dean was done, Sam fell forward to kiss him and it was rough and perfect for a moment—the scruff of his beard was just another thing to help him feel it—until Dean slowed, kissing Sam shallower and shallower until they were simply breathing the same air. Dean gently pushed Sam back until he was sitting on his haunches.

And Sam got it, he did. Dean had been kind, making up a partner Sam could relate to, but it was no more than a courtesy, not a sign that Dean had wanted this before it was his only option. This was how this was going to work, if it happened again at all. Dean would be kind, but he wasn’t going to let Sam hope for more. It was always gonna be in the dark, to be barricaded off and shut down easily.

“Sam,” Dean said, and Sam braced himself. “Can you hang on for a minute? I want to get the lantern, wanna keep the lights on when I do you.”

“When you do—“ Sam could feel how stupid he’d look if said lights were on right now, his mouth a cave in the middle of his face. Their stock of batteries was finite and their generator nearly half-empty. Light was saved for only the most necessary activities.

“Uh. Is this not a mutual thing?” Dean sounded younger all of a sudden, his tone of voice saying clearly, _you started this_ , _asshole._

And Sam got it. Seeing Sam was Dean’s necessary activity.

“Yes. I mean, right, yes.” Sam sputtered, the hope in his chest catching in his throat, strangling his speech. Maybe this wasn’t a slow death in the dark, maybe it was striking a spark, learning how to make fire. Even if they flamed out, they’d go out with the lights on, together.

Sam scrambled to help Dean up.

***  
Day 45

The prop plane was too high to reveal the body at the bottom of the ravine. The ranger couldn’t see the skull bent back on a snapped neck, the tough leather coat still whole despite the hardy weeds poking up from between the man’s skinless fingers.

But the plane wasn’t too high to see the bright puffs of fire (1-2-3) escaping from a plot of land near the park’s border. Weird, because the land had no buildings or roads; it blended seamlessly into the trees of the reserve. It almost looked like a flare gun, if that flare gun had been MacGyvered out of household chemicals, gunpowder and dumb luck. When the pattern repeated, the ranger decided it was weird enough to check out. Lights in the wilderness always had a story behind them.


End file.
